One officer is facing felony computer-tampering charges while three other patrol officers accused of on-duty sexual activity have resigned amid a series of internal investigations within the Marana Police Department.

Details of the shake-up within the 90-officer suburban Tucson police department were revealed Friday after officials released hundreds of pages of internal-affairs reports.

"It's important to realize that we hold officers to high standards," Sgt. Chriswell Scott told The Arizona Republic on Friday. "I think it's a wake-up call to everyone."

'An emotional mistake'

Dionysius Cazares(Photo: Marana Police Department)

Investigators said Officer Dionysius Cazares used a criminal-justice database to run license plates on people she believed her former romantic partner was spending time with.

They said the incident occurred early Sept. 17 when Cazares became upset that Officer Daniel Nicholas was at a residence outside his assigned coverage zone for an hour while on duty.

She finished her shift, headed home, drove past a Marana squad car and "made an emotional mistake" by running license plates of nearby vehicles through the Arizona Criminal Justice Information System (ACJIS) database, wrote Louis Fidel, the woman's attorney, in a letter contained in the file released Friday.

Cazares was hired at the department in June 2015. Before then, she worked as a health assistant in an elementary school and served four years in the U.S. Marine Corps.

Daniel Nicholas(Photo: Marana Police Department)

She had separated from her husband and was romantically involved with Nicholas. They had recently split, and she learned he was seeing someone else within the department, records show.

Cazares was terminated by the department.

A Pima County grand jury on Oct. 10 indicted her on two counts of computer tampering to obtain confidential information while accessing the database and non-public records for reasons not related to law-enforcement duties, a Class 6 felony.

"Officer Cazares was an inexperienced officer who did not understand the extent of the ACJIS rules and made an emotional mistake that she immediately reported to another officer," Fidel wrote. "... She is not a bad cop who deserves to be saddled with felony criminal charges, which will be a major hurdle to her ability to find work in another career."

Cazares is next due in court Dec. 16 for a case-management conference.

Claims of on-duty sexual conduct

Through the investigation into the misuse of the criminal-records database, investigators alleged that Nicholas and Officer Kyla Sylvia had acted inappropriately while on duty in July.

Keith Storms(Photo: Marana Police Department)

More allegations of misconduct surfaced in October that involved a fourth officer, Keith Storms. The Marana Police Department's internal-affairs bureau opened an investigation into Storms and Sylvia after receiving information from a resident that the two might have had sexual contact during a patrol shift July 28.

The anonymous woman said she was out for a walk near Marana Lake when she saw two officers "who appeared to have a strong attraction to each other," according to the internal-affairs report.

The woman told police she saw the two uniformed officers get into a vehicle and indicated they might have had oral sex, according to the report.

"The caller felt that, innocent or otherwise, the actions of the two officers 'just didn't seem like anything that a police officer on duty would be doing,' " investigators wrote.

Kyla Sylvia(Photo: Marana Police Department)

After a series of interviews, the three officers admitted, to various extents, having engaged in sexual acts while on patrol. And Sylvia later admitted to having sexual contact with another on-duty officer — Nicholas — in the same lakeside location over summer while she was off-duty, according to reports.

Investigators noted inconsistencies in their stories and cited their untruthfulness repeatedly in recommending their terminations from the department.

Nicholas submitted his letter of resignation, which took effect Oct. 19. Sylvia's resignation took effect the next day, and Storms resigned as of Nov. 9.